She looked out through the hall window. The whole lake still seemed to be covered with ice. With a lot of snow on top of it.
What if they made a hole in the ice and went diving through it? Mella asked herself. And then someone laid the door over the hole so that they would drown? That might be what had happened. But why move her body? And where is his? Is the door still out there on the ice, hidden beneath the snow?
“Can I go out on the ice and have a look?” she said.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Goran said. “It’s slushy and unreliable.”
“Is there anybody who spends time out here in winter?” Mella said. “Who owns the other house? I’m just wondering if there might be someone who could have seen something or met Wilma and Simon.”
“No, there’s never anyone in the house next to ours,” Berit said sadly. “The man who owns it is too ill and too old, and his nephews and nieces have shown no interest in it at all. But there’s Hjorleifur…”
“That’s enough!” Goran said. “You can’t send her to Hjorleifur.”
“But she was asking.”
“Leave Hjorleifur out of this! He can’t cope with the authorities.”
“Anyway,” Berit said, shaking the bucket with the dead mice as if to attract attention, “Hjorleifur Arnarson lives in a remote farmhouse about a kilometre from here. Do you know who he is?”
Mella shook her head.
“He bathes in the lake. Walks here through the forest, summer and winter alike. He usually cuts a hole in the ice by our jetty. He’s become very grumpy. You have to agree, Goran.”
“Hjorleifur has nothing to do with this,” Goran said firmly. “He’s as crazy as a loon, but there’s no evil in him.”
“I’m not suggesting that there’s any evil in him,” Berit said defensively. “But he’s become very grumpy.”
“What do you mean, grumpy?” Mella said.
“Well, for example, he doesn’t like intruders up here. He borrowed your shotgun without permission, didn’t he, Goran? And scared off some anglers. Was that two years ago?”
Goran Sillfors gave his wife a dirty look that said, “Hold your tongue!”
Mella said nothing. She was not going to go on about Goran Sillfors evidently not keeping his shotgun locked up in a gun safe.
Unconcerned, Berit went on talking.“I sometimes call in on him to buy some of the anti-mosquito oil he concocts, and we have a little chat. Last summer when I went to see him, I found his billy goat hanging in a tree.”
“Eh? How do you mean, hanging in a tree?”
“I asked him: ‘What on earth’s been happening, Hjorleifur?’ He told me the goat had butted him, and he was so angry that he killed it and threw its body into the air with all his strength. The poor thing ended up in the birch tree outside Hjorleifur’s house, got stuck there with its horns. I helped him to get it down. If I hadn’t, the crows would have started pecking at it. Hjorleifur was so sorry. The billy goat had just been in rut – that makes them a bit excited.”
Berit Sillfors turned to look at Mella.
“But Hjorleifur would never do anything to people. I agree with Goran. He’s a bit potty, but there’s no evil in him. Just be careful how you handle him. Would you like us to go with you?”
Mella checked her watch.
“I have to go home now,” she said with a smile. “If I don’t, my husband will throw me up into the birch tree.”
It’s Sunday evening at the haulage firm’s garage. I’m sitting on top of the cabin, watching Hjalmar. He’s opened up the hydraulic lift on the back of one of the lorries and is oiling the pistons. He attaches the greasing gun to the nipples and fills them. He doesn’t hear Tore come in. Suddenly Tore is standing by the lorry, yelling at him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Hjalmar glances at Tore, but continues working. Tore races to fetch some supports and jams them under the hydraulic platform.
“You fucking idiot!’ he says. “You can’t work under the hydraulic platform without making it secure, surely you realize that?”
Hjalmar says nothing. What is there to say?
“I can’t run this firm on my own,” Tore says. “It’s bad enough having Father in bed and unable to help with the book-keeping. You’re no use to me as a cripple or a corpse. Is that clear?”
Tore is upset. He spits as he talks.
“Don’t you dare let me down!” he says, pointing a finger at Hjalmar.
When Hjalmar doesn’t respond, Tore says, “You’re an idiot! A bloody idiot!”
Turning on his heel, he leaves.
No, Hjalmar thinks. I won’t let you down. Not again.
They spend five days and nights looking for Tore. Volunteers from the old Emergency Service and the Mountain Rescue Service are out searching. Police officers and a company of soldiers from the I. 19 regiment in Boden are also taking part. An aeroplane makes two reconnaissance flights over the wooded areas north of Piilijarvi. No sign of Tore. The men from the village spend most of their time outside the Krekulas’ house. Drinking coffee. They are either on their way into the forest or on their way back from it. They want to talk to Hjalmar, ask him where he and his brother went, what the route looked like. What the swamp looked like. Hjalmar does not want to talk, tries to keep out of the way, but he is forced to answer questions. He is back at home now, having spent the first couple of nights with Elmina Salmi. On the morning of the second day, she took Hjalmar home and said to Kerttu Krekula, “You have a son here who is alive. Be grateful for that.”
Kerttu gave him some porridge, but did not say anything. She still has not said anything to Hjalmar.
When the men ask him questions, he turns himself inside out trying to answer them. But he does not know. Cannot remember. In the end he starts making things up and telling lies, just to have something to tell them. Did they see Hanhivaara mountain? Yes, maybe. Was the sun on their backs as they walked? Yes, he thought it was. Had the trees been thinned? No, they had not been.
They search the forest to the north of the village. That is where he came from when he emerged onto the main road. And everything he says suggests that it is where the boys got lost.
He has to get used to days like this. To people falling silent when he approaches. To comments such as: “May God forgive you” or “What the hell were you thinking of, boy?” To head-shakings and piercing looks. To his mother’s silence. Not that she ever had much to say for herself. But now she does not even look at him.
Once he overhears his father say to one of the men from the village: “What I’d really like to do is kill the little shit, but that wouldn’t bring Tore back.”
“
But Isak Krekula does not believe in God. He has nothing to console him. Nor can he do as Job did, wave his fist in the air and cry out to the Lord. He mutters something evasive and embarrassed in reply. But he clenches his fists whenever he looks at his son.
On the sixth day, the search for Tore Krekula is called off. A six-year-old boy is incapable of surviving for five days and nights in the forest. He has probably been sucked into one of the bogs. Or perhaps he has drowned in the beck the brothers were standing by when they parted. Or he has been savaged by a bear. The house feels empty. Some of the villagers consider it their duty to spend an hour there in the evening on the sixth day. But all of them have their own lives to lead. What is the point of looking for someone who is
